News - BT to test 1Gbps broadband within months

[HEXUS]

The trial of a new fibre-to-the-premise product will commence in Suffolk early next year.

Read more.

[Jay]

why not just FTC to the rest of the UK sorted first?

[aidanjt]

FttP eh? Sounds like very businessy terminology, as in, screw you ordinary people.

[Dareos]

umm why? all it means is that it will be fibre optic right to your door, rather than changing to a drop cable (coax) at the cabinet in the street like Virgins current setup

[Singh400]

And to charge three times your house price for it. We need more competition.

[Lee H]

It's all good having these silly speeds but what is the point of them if you cannot use them due to data limits or FUP's in place.

Can you imagine having a 1 Gbps connection and only being able to download say 100 Gb in a month. What is the point of it as you'll use all that up straight away.

Before they get the champagne out over the fastest speeds, they need to work on the infrastructure and backend to deal with more increased data demands now people have more than 1 device at home connected to the internet, streaming things from say iplayer, lovefilms and other rental places. If they don't, give it 4-5 years and we'll be heading for a meltdown.

[tickleonthetum]

So let me get this right, BT are crowing about offering 100Mbbps when most of us can't afford or even get 8 or 20 yet?!?!

What on earth are they going to charge for this I wonder. Their current offerings are pricey:

20Mpps 10GBpm cap £13.99
20Mpps 40GBpm cap £17.99
20Mpps Unlimited cap £27.99

So 100Mpps Unlimited (after all what's the pointed in having a capped service with that speed) is going to cost at least £37.99 I would guess more like £47.99 though, at least. Plus possible an installation fee.

Also, lets face it the cities and posh towns are going to get this first. It'll be years before everyone gets access to it...

It would be better if they either just done the whole network in one fell swoop or improved what's already there. Where I live, we've seen the connection speeds drop from nearly 20Mbps down to 5.5 Mbps over the last year and it's getting worse...

[keasla]

so does that mean if i get that i will be getting about 30mb down and about 5mb up with there track record of the UPTO 24mb but you get 2mb

[dangel]

It's all good having these silly speeds but what is the point of them if you cannot use them due to data limits or FUP's in place.

Can you imagine having a 1 Gbps connection and only being able to download say 100 Gb in a month. What is the point of it as you'll use all that up straight away.

Before they get the champagne out over the fastest speeds, they need to work on the infrastructure and backend to deal with more increased data demands now people have more than 1 device at home connected to the internet, streaming things from say iplayer, lovefilms and other rental places. If they don't, give it 4-5 years and we'll be heading for a meltdown.

Couldn't agree more Lee - personally i'll stick with my 8mbit COMPLETELY UNLIMITED connection over a fast one with daft limits.

[aidanjt]

umm why? all it means is that it will be fibre optic right to your door, rather than changing to a drop cable (coax) at the cabinet in the street like Virgins current setup

All it means is that it will be fibre optic right up to your workplace. FttH would go into your house for a reasonable price (perhaps around the same as it cost for ADSL when it was first being rolled out).

As mentioned above. Absurd transmission rates is useless without the infrastructure to fill the bandwidth. With 1Gbps in every home, British infrastructure would need to handle hundreds of petabits per second for locals alone.

[chadders]

So in laymans terms, having a Ferrari on the M25 in rush hour?

[aidanjt]

Precisely.

[Astridax93]

All it means is that it will be fibre optic right up to your workplace. FttH would go into your house for a reasonable price (perhaps around the same as it cost for ADSL when it was first being rolled out).

As mentioned above. Absurd transmission rates is useless without the infrastructure to fill the bandwidth. With 1Gbps in every home, British infrastructure would need to handle hundreds of petabits per second for locals alone.

Not only that even if british infrastructure is capable of delivering these speeds, is home infrastructure?

For example 1Gb/s roughly equates to 125MB/s transfer speed. What hard drives apart from decent SSD's do you know that have transfer rates at that speed?

The only way of doing it would be to have a small cheap say, 10GB ssd capable of those speeds and then use it as a buffer as it offloaded data to your standard HD.

[Funkstar]

Or how about multiple devices in use at the same time?

There is no way a single user needs that kind of bandwidth, but this is meant to be shared between several or even lots of people. Note how it isn't called Fibre To The Home it's Fibre To The Premises. This really means offices, shops, hotels, etc. This is unlikely to be affordable for home use.

[aidanjt]

Not only that even if british infrastructure is capable of delivering these speeds, is home infrastructure?

For example 1Gb/s roughly equates to 125MB/s transfer speed. What hard drives apart from decent SSD's do you know that have transfer rates at that speed?

The only way of doing it would be to have a small cheap say, 10GB ssd capable of those speeds and then use it as a buffer as it offloaded data to your standard HD.

2TB WD Blacks are capable of saturating it. As well as the mass of technology which needs simultaneous internet connectivity (TVs, Consoles, Phones, Tablets, laptops, desktops, etc). And if you don't use it, you don't use it, no loss.

But as Funkstar says, BT is only doing FttP, which excludes affordable home connectivity. They're only playing semi-catchup using FttC, a half-assed effort, really. While 100mbps is getting pretty common in the rest of Europe, especially the more socialist countries. GO BT!

[Astridax93]

How do you mean saturate it? If drive write speeds don't support 125MB/s then the data won't get there that fast. It won't affect the small files noticeably. But you'll never get that download speed for a large video, since although it is may be being pumped to your router that fast. It'll never be written that fast. Could write portions to the RAM if it large enough.